#Review By Lou of Traitor By Chris Ryan @ChrisRyanMM @ZaffreBooks @RandomTTours #BlogTour #Thriller #Traitor #MillitaryThriller #SASThriller

Traitor
By Chris Ryan

Traitor is a stand-alone SAS thriller, so perfect for whether, like me, you are new to Chris Ryan’s books or have read any of his books before. : Chris Ryan is dubbed the original SAS fiction hero, selling over 5 million copies of his military thrillers. He has lots of first hand experience of being in the real SAS. You can find more about this in the bio after my review.
I am thrilled to present my review of Traitor as part of the Random T. Tours/Zaffre Books blog tour.

Blurb

A year after his older brother made the ultimate sacrifice, Sergeant Major
Luke Carter, decorated hero of 22 SAS, is sent to Perth on a recruiting job.
His orders: select two candidates from the SASR for a highly sensitive
mission on foreign soil.
But when a sudden crisis threatens to derail the plan, Carter and his new
colleagues find themselves forced into action on a high-stakes operation.
One that has the potential to change the course of the war in Ukraine.
So begins a deadly game of predator and prey, moving from the streets of
Minsk to the cliffs above the Black Sea. And a final showdown with the
biggest target of all…

Review

Sergeant Major Luke Carter is the main character who has to pull together the best team possible, but for what reason? He doesn’t really know. Armed with very little information, apart from he has to travel to Australia to choose two candidates from the SASR for a mission. There’s the question of the sizzle, what’s the sizzle? You’ll have to read to find out. Even Sergeant Major Luke Carter has to work it out.

The air of mystery and trepidation is intense. The stakes are high and it can be felt as the writing builds atmosphere.
As the mission begins, the book become more involving and gripping. It is increasingly insightful and thought-provoking as it makes you think about the conflicts happening across the world today.

It’s a cracking military thriller!

About the Author

In 1984 he joined 22 SAS. After completing the year-long Alpine Guides
Course, he was the troop guide for B Squadron Mountain Troop. He completed three tours with the anti-terrorist team, serving as an assaulter, sniper and finally Sniper Team Commander.

Chris was part of the SAS eight-man team chosen for the famous Bravo Two Zero mission during the 1991 Gulf War. He was the only member of the unit to escape from Iraq, where three of his colleagues were killed and four captured, for which he was awarded the Military Medal.
Chris wrote about
his experiences in his book The One That Got Away, which became an
immediate bestseller. Since then he has written over fifty books and
presented a number of very successful TV programmes.

#Review By Lou of The Burning By Robert Derry @RGD48649604 @RandomTTours #TheBurning

The Burning
By Robert Derry

The Burning isn’t my usual type of read, but I am glad to have received this mysterious horror that mixes the modern with the historical for the blog tour. Here’s the blurb and then my review below that:

Blurb

To the Mountford family, it was their very own chocolate-box cottage, set deep in the folds of the English countryside. Their sumptuous second home, a nest egg for retirement, a secluded bolthole for times of trouble.
In March 2020, as London fell silent under the threat of Covid19, Tony Mountford made the snap decision to see out lockdown in the close confines of their charming country retreat, unconcerned that one mischievous ghost would be waiting for them. But something had changed as fear gripped the nation, and the very bones of their much-loved timber-framed holiday home now creaked to the footfall of more sinister steps. A new tenant has taken up residence within its thick stone walls, drawn from a time when the innocent had paid the price for ignorance as a Royal edict fanned the flames of fear across the shires of England.

Take care as you travel with them, for a chill wind is turning northward, and the embers are still burning.

Review

The Burning weaves readers between the times of witchcraft and times when Covid first hit the world. How they are connected is certainly imaginative as the two times collide in a serene area of England where the Mountford family have a second home. It’s easy to picture it all within the skilful writing.

Fact and fiction merge together to tell a compelling story. It becomes increasingly chilling as it goes on, but it starts with a Ouija board, found in a toybox.

After research, a history of witchcraft, witch trials, witch-hunters is uncovered.
Paranormal activity is also discovered and all is far from being benign as horrors happen.

Throughout the book, there are many twists and turns in what seems like a well-researched mysterious horror book.

#Review By Lou of All You Need Is Love By Peter Brown and Steven Gaines @Octopus_Books @RandomTTours #AllYouNeedIsLove #TheEndOfTheBeatles #PeterBrown #StevenGaines #TheBeatles #Biography #Music #NonFiction

All You Need Is Love
By Peter Brown and Steven Gaines

A Must of All Beatles Fans! All You Need Is Love is a fascinating look into The Beatles as told by their inner circle and The Beatles that uncovers lots of previously unpublished interviews. It’s quite astonishing and an incredibly interesting read as it is interviews and not an oral history. Find out more in the blurb and my thoughts below. Then discover more about the authors of All You Need Is Love. Their own bios have a tale or two to tell about how intimate they were with The Beatles.

Blurb

All You Need is Love is a ground-breaking oral history of the Beatles and how it all came to an end.
Based on never-before-published or heard interviews with Paul McCartney,
Yoko Ono, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and their families, friends, and business
associates, this is a landmark book, containing stunning new revelations, about the
biggest band the world has ever seen.
In 1980-1981 former COO of Apple Corp, Peter Brown and author Steven Gaines
interviewed everyone in the Beatles’ inner circle and included a small portion of the
transcripts in their international bestselling book The Love You Make, which spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list. But left in their archives was a treasure trove of unique and candid interviews that they chose not to publish, until now.
A powerful work assembled through honest, intimate, sometimes contradictory and always fascinating testimony, All You Need is Love is a one-of-a-kind insight into the final days, weeks, months and years of the Beatles phenomenon.

Review

I wasn’t born when The Beatles were at the height of their fame, nor was I when they split, but everyone knows who The Beatles are/were, even at primary school a major song to learn was Yellow Submarine and everyone knows the Christmas songs too, even today in the decade of the mid-2020’s. Two are dead and yet their long lasting reach into public consciousness goes on with popstars coming after them still influenced by their music and even into film culture where All You Need Is Love features in a major scene in that great film, Love Actually.

As for the book, All You Need Is Love has sparkling never published before interviews that are bound to set tongues wagging as conversations start.
I know, there’s been a few of these dotted around, but these interviews are highly significant. There are revelations about the band and in a midst of ever speculation about how it all ended, this feels like it gets to the roots of everything. It’s particularly special because it isn’t second hand information.
Some of the book is, however, bittersweet as there are interviews by John Lennon not long before he was murdered.

Once started, it becomes intensely fascinating in a way I hadn’t quite expected. The presentation of the interviews feel so free-flow and so candid, in a way that you feel like you’re in rooms with everyone being interviewed, much like youre sitting in an audience.

The book feels so natural, like nothing is stilted nor concealed, even contradictory statements. A picture emerges of the building of tensions and you get a feel of what that time of The Beatles coming to an end may have been like for all concerned.

It’s great that the interviews see the light of day from previously being hidden in the depths of archives. It got me thinking that in a way, what with both fans who perhaps saw The Beatles and the remaining Beatles and Yoko Ono getting naturally older, it feels fitting that this book is published. It got me wondering if this would be the last one with previously hidden facts. I guess we will have to wait and see. For now, this is quite some emergence of interviews with The Beatles and people who they were associated with like family, colleagues alike, some who are now dead, but their names also live on in the music industry and beyond. This makes it special and quite unique.

Whether a Beatles fan or a music fan in general, this is a totally fascinating read and one that may well get you thinking of the band all over again and in a new light.

About the Authors

STEVEN GAINES is the New York Times bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons and The Love You Make: An Insiders Story of the Beatles (with Peter Brown).
His journalism has appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and New York magazine, where he was a contributing editor for 12 years.
Mr. Gaines is the co-founder and a past vice-chairman of the Hamptons International Film Festival. He has lived in Wainscott, a small hamlet on the East End of Long Island, for 40 years.

PETER BROWN is the former COO of Apple Corp, the Beatles’ financial empire. He’s been a Beatles intimate since their earliest days in Liverpool.
Their passports were locked in his desk drawer. He was best man at John and Yoko’s wedding, he introduced Paul to Linda Eastman, and perhaps the most charming of his credentials is that he’s the only real person ever mentioned in a Beatles song, “Peter Brown called to say, you can make it okay, you can marry in Gibraltar near Spain,” from the “Ballad of John and Yoko.”
Mr. Brown is now chairman of the international public relations firm of Brown Lloyd James LTD.

#Review By Lou of The Secret Keepers By Tilly Bagshawe @tillybagshawe_author @harpercollinsuk @RandomTTours #TheSecretKeepers #BlogTour

The Secret Keepers
By Tilly Bagshawe

The Secret Keepers is the latest book by Tilly Bagshawe. It’s perfect for fans of Lucinda Riley. Tilly Bagshawe has been writing for a long time and this is the first I’ve read of hers. I am glad I read The Secret Keepers and I am sure it won’t be my last.
Check out the blurb below and my review.

Blurb

Sweeping from the French Riviera to the wind-blown Cornish cliffs, lose yourself in this spellbinding novel about one golden family – and a devastating secret that binds them, forever…

Year after idyllic year, the Challant family retreat to their summer house on the glittering French Riviera.

Until one stormy night in 1928 when a local boy suffers a fatal accident in the grounds. Overnight, it becomes a place of ghosts.

As time unspools, those dark memories loosen their grip on the four Challant children. And yet the local whispers about that night never quieten, calling them back to the house on the Riviera.

A family secret lies waiting in the past.

But dare they unlock the truth?

Review

Unlock scandalous secrets and enter the 1920’s and meet the Challant family in their luxurious retreat in France. Money can’t buy the perfect life. Events happen, such as a fatal accident and then there’s no telling what this sparks… unless you read the book. Nothing is hidden forever and secrets are always there, just lying in wait to be discovered. People remember things, tongues wag and whispers become noisier. Some of the family are happy enough to return to the French Riviera and others, not quite so much. There’s quite a bit to unravel to reach the truth of what’s really happened on such a fatal night, making it a compelling read as the air becomes quite mysterious.

The Secret Keepers is a book to easily lose yourself in the locations of France, Switzerland and Cornwall and become entangled in the characters lives and agendas.

About the Author

Tilly Bagshawe is the internationally bestselling author of nineteen previous novels and has written for newspapers and magazines including the Sunday Times, Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph. She lives in London with her husband and 4 children.

#Review By Lou of The Rabbits By A.A. Milne @farragobooks #AAMilne #Satire #TheRabbits @RandomTTours #Historical #BlogTour

The Rabbits
By A.A. Milne

Mention AA Milne and the first things that usually come to people’s mind is Winnie the Pooh and his friends in Hundred Acre Wood and Christopher Robin. AA Milne didn’t only write children’s books, he also wrote for adults. The Rabbits was originally serialised in Punch Magazine. It has been all re-published in a book, which I have the privilege to review for part of The Random T. Tours blog tour. What I think you may also find interesting is a bit more about A.A. Milne, so I’ve included a bit after my review.

Blurb

Pre-war halcyon days captured in a series of comic sketches, the ‘Rabbits’ offer the purest of escapism – and possibly A. A. Milne’s most distinctive work

The adventures of a group of friends, pre-war, with far too much time on their hands.

The Rabbits, as they call themselves, are Archie Mannering, his sister Myra, Samuel Simpson, Thomas of the Admiralty, Dahlia Blair and the narrator, with occasional guests. Their conversation is almost entirely frivolous, their activity vacillates between immensely energetic and happily lazy, and their social mores are surprisingly progressive.

Originally published as sketches in Punch, the Rabbits’ escapades are a charming portrait of middle-class antics on the brink of being shattered by World War I, and fail entirely to take themselves seriously.

Review

The Rabbits was a surprising read. Not having read any of A.A. Milne’s adult material before, this intrigued me, after all I, like so many children grew up with his Winnie the Pooh stories and his poetry, such as Now We Are Six and loved them.

The Rabbits is a look at the middle classes just before world war one fully broke out, more at a time when the world was on the brink of war. There are friendships sharing past-times, playing sports such as crickets and eccentricities in personalities; it’s quite a study into this period of time, brought to readers with humour.

It reads like it is serialised in a magazine, which brings a different feel from your typical novel and yet still works rather well, once you’ve got used to the feel and style of it.

At a time where, yet again the world seems so uncertain, this book brings lightness and a time to relax and be transported to a different time and have a laugh at good wit. A.A. Milne turns out to be quite the satirical comedy writer and it’s enjoyable.
It’s quite poignant in a way, knowing what we know, that these were the last easy-going sunny days before the world grew darker as war broke out.
Let your mind wander to times gone by. It’s a very enjoyable read.

A.A. Milne wanted to be known for more than just his creation of Winnie The Pooh and now, all these years later, hopefully he will be. It truly is worth reading.

About The Author

A. A. Milne (Alan Alexander) is best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh, but was also an accomplished writer of fiction for grown-ups.

Prior to the First World War he worked as a young man as Assistant Editor of Punch magazine.

After leaving the army, he began to write plays, short stories and novels; and then later works for children, including the poetry collection When We Were Very Young and the storybook Winnie-the-Pooh in 1926.

Milne continued to be a prolific writer until his death in 1956.

#Review By Lou of Leave No Trace By Jo Callaghan @JoCallaghanKat @simonschusterUK #LeaveNoTrace #Thriller @RandomTTours

Leave No Trace
By Jo Callaghan

Leave No Trace is a different crime book. Humans and AI come together. Check out the blurb and my review below as part of the Random T. Tours blog tour.
I didn’t read much acclaimed, In A Blink Of The Eye first and I felt that it was fine to read this as a stand-alone or of course, read after that.

Blurb

DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock return in the provocative new thriller from the author of In the Blink of an Eye.

One detective driven by instinct, the other by logic.
It will take both to find a killer who knows the true meaning of fear . . .

When the body of a man is found crucified at the top of Mount Judd, AIDE Lock – the world’s first AI Detective – and DCS Kat Frank are thrust into the spotlight as they are given their first live case.

But with the discovery of another man’s body – also crucified – it appears that their killer is only just getting started. With the police warning local men to be vigilant, the Future Policing Unit is thrust into a hostile media frenzy as they desperately search for connections between the victims. But time is running out for them to join the dots and prevent another death.

For if Kat and Lock know anything, it’s that killers rarely stop – until they are made to.

Review

Leave No Trace is almost futuristic in that one detective is human and the other is AI, except nowadays, this feels closer than ever and even the original creator of AI is now questioning certain aspects of its unleashing. An AI detective feels just a step or two further than that of what we see today.

Leave No Trace is a very well-written, thought-provoking book. You can tell for awhile that the AI is perhaps not perfect within the detective creation, but mixed in with humans, it feels increasingly humanistic as though your brain almost accepts it and I think that’s down to the great quality of the writing, until you remember that it’s AI and this is what makes it interesting for society and readers. It adds many questions for the real world about how far AI could go and how far humans perhaps want it to go and the impacts. It’s quite an exploration of it in this crime series.

The mystery itself is intriguing and some of the book is set out like an interview, which adds an immersive quality. Time is running out for the detectives to solve the case as there’s the danger of more murders. It’s a challenging, rather dark case because how do you solve a murder, when seemingly there’s no trace to collect clues from?
For the answer, you’ll need to find out by reading the book.

Overall it’s a very good read, in its style, including its short, sharp sentences, especially at the beginning and the compelling twists of the plot.
It’s thought-provoking nature beyond the page.